THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN & COPTIC LANGUAGES
-The Origin of the Coptic Language-
The Origin of the Coptic Language
Semitic or Hemitic: The ancient Egyptian language, which was the origin of the Coptic language, was one of the groups of languages scholars have classified as Hemito- Semitic.1 This classification includes as well ancient Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic. The philologists who agree with this classification discovered that the ancient Egyptian language consisted of two elements: Semitic and Hemitic, or Indian-European. Other scholars believe that the language tended to be of the Semitic group because there was a great similarity between the Semitic and ancient Egyptian languages. At this time, there is no definite answer as to which group is related.
The Ancient Egyptian Literature:
The ancient Egyptian language has its own grammar and literature. Many thousands of distinct texts were left on their pyramids, temples, tombs, obelisks, statues, ostraca, stela, papyri, sarcophagi, coffins, vessels, and different objects. Theses texts can be classified as follow: funeral, military, political, daily life, stories, morals, principles, and instructions, hymns, religious and ritual, and historical.
Stages of the Ancient Egyptian Language:
Ancient Egyptian evolved in various stages. It was used from Dynasties I-VIII or from 3180 to 2240 B.C. The writing/inscriptions included the pyramid texts, official documents, formal funerary formulae, tomb inscriptions, and some biographical texts. This stage continued with little modification to the second stage, considered the Middle Egyptian, from Dynasties IX-XI or 2240-1990 B.C. Middle Egyptian was “later contaminated with popular elements. In the later form it survived for some monumental and literary purposes right down to Greco-Roman times, while the earlier form was retained as the religious language.”3 Late Egyptian, from Dynasties XVIII-XXIV (1573 to 715 B.C.), included business documents, letters, stories, literary compositions, and official monuments related to Dynasty XIX and later. In addition to few texts, “wherein the vernacular shows itself unmixed with the ‘classical’ idiom of Middle Egypt,” different non-Egyptian vocabulary appeared in this Late Egyptian stage.